Disgusting, Scary 'Walking' Fish Invades Maryland

texchanchan writes: "It's from China, it's a predator, and it can live for DAYS out of water. And it's in Maryland as reported at Yahoo. 'They can survive for two to three days out of water, breathing air with a primitive lung, pushing themselves around with their pectoral fins.' Read about it at the Maryland Fishing Report site or just look at its picture. Maryland Fishing Report says: 'This fish was most likely introduced by an individual with an aquarium. Never release aquarium fish into ponds and lakes!' Those exotic species will get us yet."

Comments

My favorite exotic species

[zenyu]

I really love the idea of the Parrots in NYC, there is apparently only one colony of them living on top of Statium lights on the northern end of the city. Only a little over a hundred, no one is quite sure where they came from, but they've been there since the 60's or 70's. There has been some talk of killing them off but I think few think they could spread very far.

Re: proof? yes, of some things

[Buck2]

The chances of all the basic building blocks of the simplest living creature magically coming together in one place might be low, but if you allow for self-replicating proteins as a stepping stone to "life" then that condition is not necessary.

It may be possible to get to something resembling a living creature through successive iterations and mutations of a "not-life" protein. These can happen very, very fast and are completely directed (in the sense that they are non-random, as you proposed).

MmmMMmm... Ugly fish. Yummy.

[BigBlockMopar]

could this be living proof of the evolutionary path that aquatic creatures took to make it to land many millions (billions) of years ago? looks like it to me :-) I love hearing about this.

The fish is a delicacy in Asian cooking; I've had them.

I get *hell* from customs for sneaking Mighty Taco across the border, and yet these nasty things are available in any large Asian community?

Something's not right there. How is it that these were allowed to be imported in the first place?

It's a sign of either an intellectual failure or starvation (I'll leave the intellectual failure with customs and starvation with my Chinese friends) that those things would be considered a delicacy, anyway.